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Why do people smoke fake marijuana — sometimes called K2 or spice — versus the real and safer McCoy served up from mother nature? To pass employers’ urine drug tests? To avoid being detected as easily as cops can detect marijuana’s unique stink when smoked?...

Criminal defense is a wild ride. One day, I am sitting on top of the world with a big court victory, the next day I am appearing before a very difficult judge to say the least, and the next day I am talking to a...

For better or worse, negotiations are an essential part of criminal and civil litigation, running from seeking dismissals of cases, to each party’s giving up part of the loaf. Criminal negotiations usually are not games of chicken, unless the police or prosecutors have done underhanded...

Most of my criminal defense clients manage their daily lives rather well in the face of their pending court cases. Some get consumed by their cases from time to time, and sometimes share that with me. I have thought of criminal defense lawyers being akin...

Prosecutor: “Jon, you are a private practice lawyer who is willing to waste time.” Translation: “You put time into defending your clients without concern whether doing so will not be financially profitable to you.” One of the more upstanding local prosecutors recently said that to me before court...

So many people are afraid of public speaking, seeing the audience as a potential source of judgment, criticism, ridicule and shaming, rather than as connected to the speaker or as akin to the speaker’s closest friends. Many people write in stilted fashion, reaching constantly for...

“You do not care about me or my case! I am going to get another criminal defense lawyer!” The foregoing question is a crossroads statement. A defensive and indignant lawyer might reply: “You ingrate!  I have been working my fingers to the bone for you, even...

All my clients are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. However, that does not mean that all my clients come to me with clean hands. Behind the seemingly picture-perfect lives of plenty of people who seem to have reached many...

Repeatedly in my initial discussions with them, clients and witnesses recount the events leading to my client’s arrest not only with descriptive words but with conclusions, opinions, and the occasional (usually with younger witnesses, which seems to be a generational way of speaking) "so I was...

Courtesy SunWolf: A criminal defense lawyer’s criminal defense lawyer, showing lawyers the powerful path to humanizing our clients, through storytellng, kindness to all, summoning our inner magic, and a reminder that “reality is no obstacle.” Dr. SunWolf — the great storytelling lawyer who proclaims that...